California's DCFC infrastructure is growing so fast that travel routes are starting to get multiple stations in the same town (like Baker) or lots of towns along the way have a station.
Hard to say which is the most stressful part of long range EV travel these days: Planning charge stops, or my wife sitting silently next to me staring straight ahead?
A perfect place for a charge point.
What does a destination charger mean? You have to actually be a customer there to utilize it?
The first couple of trips are rough because, as you said, is it the car, the charger, the company, who knows what's wrong? I've had mine for 8 months, 5 major road trips, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable. Thank goodness for the forum, really.I drove my GT from Orange County, CA to Las Vegas over the weekend, and as many have done I wanted to give a few impressions from my trip.
Charged up to 100% at home, and headed off to Baker, CA to charge, keeping speeds at or below 75 mph. One other passenger, two suitcases and golf clubs in tow. Once I got to Baker that is when things got interesting. I knew that there were only two 150 kw chargers there, so I wanted to make sure I grabbed one of those. Plugged into the first charger and…. nothing. Turns out the screen on that charger was blank and wasn’t working at all, but having never fast charged a car before I didn’t know this. No problem, I went to another 150 kw charger to try my 2nd attempt. Plugged in and plug and charge failed. Tried another charger, failed again. At this point I assume plug and charge is not going to work so I tried the EA app. Also didn’t work. I then just tried to pay with my credit card, and it got declined. So this is now 5 separate failures and I’m thinking it’s very likely that I’m going to have to find another charging spot in Baker. Wanting to make this stop work though, I tried a 50 kw charger further down, plugged in, and success! Plug in charge worked fine and the car slowly but surely started pulling down power at 42 kw. I pulled in at 33%, and even though I only had about 85 miles left to get to Vegas, I wanted to be sure I made it fine so we spent an hour there to charge up to 80%.
Leaving Baker things got interesting again. Despite driving at 75 mph or less, there were extremely strong headwinds, and for the first 40 miles we only got 1.1 miles per kwh. I knew we had enough juice to make it to Vegas, but seeing our state of charge drop from 80% to almost ~44% in 40 miles was not fun, and seeing the range drop along with it. This was probably my biggest revelation of the trip. I was using Ford’s built in navigation system, and I figured that since the GOM knew where I was going that the range in the car would be somewhat based on my route. You all can correct me if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I noticed the GOM would drop significantly on uphill climbs, and then I would get most of the range back on the way down the hill. I assumed it would stay somewhat consistent, as the car should know what goes up must come down based on my inputted destination.
We made it to Vegas at 33% charge. The hotel I was staying at had 2 free EV chargers, and when I pulled in there was once space left, and a Tesla that had finished charging, so I was able to charge back up to 100% overnight.
After two nights in Vegas and a drive out to play golf I started my return trip home at 92% charge. I used Ford’s navigation again, and knew that I could comfortably make it to Barstow, CA for a charge that would get me the rest of the way home. Wanting to save range still, I only used the heated seats and steering wheel. It got as low as 23 degrees fahrenheit on the drive, and being a Southern California boy I was not prepared for just how cold that is without using the car’s heater. In hindsight I probably should have put a jacket on before I started the drive. I indured the cold though, and rolled into Barstow at 26% charge.
The EA chargers in Barstow are at a Walmart, plugged into the nearest 150 kw charger I saw, plug and charge worked just fine and I started pulling down power at 124 kw. Finally, this is what I was hoping for on the first leg of the trip! Living in Orange County, Mach Es are fairly common, I see a few of them everyday, so I had yet to have a single person comment on my car while I have owned it. Not so in Barstow though. Plenty of people came by to chat while I sat there charging, most asking how far the car could go and how long it would take me to charge. It was fun getting to chat with everyone and talk up the car. Remembering the 1.1 miles per kwh that I got at times on the way to Vegas, even though I only needed to charge to probably 60% or so to get me home, I decided to charge to 80% just to be extremely safe. That took 35 minutes.
Made it back to Orange County with 44% charge left, with the car being much more efficient for that last leg of the trip.
Overall the GT is an amazing road trip car. The seats were absolutely some of the most comfortable I have ever sat in on a long trip, and using Blue Cruise for significant stretches made the drive seem effortless. The GOM not being very reliable though even with my destination inputted, and the issues I had getting the car to charge in Baker were really the only downsides. I know Ford has talked about that for the Lightning, the GOM will eventually take into account temperature, elevation, trailer weight, and so on when calculating a route. It seems like the Mach E is far from that at the moment though.
I love this car, and it was fun getting to experience the highs and lows of EV ownership over a long weekend.
Lol...I saw your car. I was there too...I have a Red Mach e. I think only 1 of the 4 chargers was working when I was there. I reported them, including some vandalism to one plug to the front desk. I hope it did good.
I saw yours also! Were you able to get a charge?
Ha ha...I was the first time...then the only available charger was being used. I did, however park in the charger spot my whole stay, since the charger was broken, I didn't want to see that prime spot go to waste....LOL
